Original article written
by Eddie Frierson
researched and compiled by Carrie
Birdsong
In the times when Giants walked the earth and roamed the Polo
Grounds, none was more honored than Christy Mathewson. Delivering all four of his pitches, including
his famous “fadeaway” (now called a screwball), with impeccable control and an
easy motion, the right-handed Mathewson was the greatest pitcher of the
Deadball Era’s first decade, compiling a 2.13 ERA over 17 seasons and setting
modern National League records for wins in a season (37), wins in a career
(373), and consecutive 20-win seasons (12).
Aside from his pitching achievements, he was the greatest all-around
hero of the Deadball Era, a handsome, college-educated man who lifted the rowdy
world of baseball to gentlemanliness.
Matty was the basis, many say, for the idealized athlete Frank
Merriwell, an inspiration to many authors over the years, and the motivation
for an Off-Broadway play based on his life and writings. “He gripped the imagination of a country that
held a hundred million people and held this grip with a firmer hold than any
man of his day or time,” wrote sportswriter Grantland Rice[1].
The oldest of six children of Minerva (Capwell) and Gilbert
Mathewson, a Civil War veteran who became a post-office worker and farmer,
Christopher Mathewson was born on August 12, 1880, in Factoryville,
Pennsylvania, a small town in the northeastern part of the state, not far from
the New York border. His forebears,
original followers of Roger Williams in Rhode Island, had settled in the region
as the nation began to expand westward after the Revolutionary War. The blond-haired, blue-eyed Christy was always
big for his age – he eventually grew to 6 feet- 1 ½ and 195 pounds, and his
playmates called him “Husk.” At age 14
he pitched for the Factoryville town team.
Christy continued pitching for semipro teams in the area while attending
Keystone Academy, a Factoryville prep school founded by his grandmother. The summer after he graduated from
Keystone, Christy was pitching for the team from Honesdale, Pennsylvania, when
a left-handed teammate named Dave Williams, who later pitched three
games for the Boston Americans in 1902, taught him the fadeaway.
In September 1898 Mathewson enrolled at Bucknell University
in Lewisburg, 75 miles west of Factoryville.
He pitched for the baseball team and played center on the basketball
team, but football was his chief claim to fame at Bucknell, which played a
rugged schedule that included powerhouses such as Penn State, Army, and
Navy. For three years Christy was the
varsity’s first-sting fullback, punter, and drop kicker; no less an authority
than Walter Camp, the originator of the All-America team, called him “the
greatest drop-kicker in intercollegiate competition.’[2] Majoring in forestry, Mathewson also was a
top-flight student who excelled in extracurricular activities, serving as class
president and joining the band, glee club, two literary societies, and
fraternities. It was also at Bucknell
that he met his future bride, Jane Stoughton.
During the summer after his freshman year, Mathewson signed
his first professional contract with Taunton, Massachusetts, of the New England
League. He pitched in 17 games and went
2-13. To make a bad season worse,
Taunton folded, and the players had to arrange a Labor Day exhibition just to
raise funds for their transportation home.
Before the start of the Bucknell-Pen football game that fall (in which
Matty kicked two long-range field goals, then worth five points apiece, the
same as touchdowns), an old major-league player named Phenomenal Smith
signed him to a contract with Norfolk of the Virginia League for the following
summer. Reporting right after final
exams, Mathewson became an immediate sensation in the Virginia League, amassing
a 20-2 record by mid-July. After the
last of those victories, Smith took Matty aside in the clubhouse and offered
him a choice between being sold to Philadelphia or New York of the National
League. Christy chose New York, thinking
the Giants needed pitching more than the Phillies, and made his major-league
debut on July 17, 1900, one month shy of his 20th birthday.
Mathewson did little more than pitch batting practice for
the Giants, becoming so frustrated that he wrote a friend, “I don’t give a rap
whether they sign me or not.”[3] Towards
the end of the season, he received two starting assignments and lost both,
ending the year winless in three decisions with a 5.08 ERA. The Giants returned him to Norfolk. That offseason the Cincinnati Reds drafted
him for $100, then promptly traded him back to the Giants for a washed-up Amos
Rusie. It was part of a collusive grand
plan to save $900; the Giants would have to pay $1,000 to Norfolk if they kept
Mathewson after the season, and Reds owner John T. Brush was negotiating
to buy the Giants from Andrew Freedman.
In 1901, his first full season in the majors, Mathewson pitched a
no-hitter against the St. Louis Cardinals on July 15 and went 20-17 with a 2.41
ERA for the seventh-place Giants. New
York fans started calling their ace “The Big Six.” Matty thought it was because of his height,
but the nickname probably originated when sportswriter Sam Crane compared him
to New York City’s Big Six Fire Company, the fastest to put out a fire[4].
The Giants floundered again at the start of 1902, prompting
new manager Horace Fogel to play Mathewson in three games at first base
and four in the outfield in addition to his pitching duties. Many have implied that this was a sign of
Fogel’s ineptitude. Still, years later Matty defended Fogel, explaining that the
manager knew he was a good hitter and fielder and was willing to try anything
to turn around his team. The experiment
ended, however, when John McGraw took over as manager on July 19. To that point, Mathewson had won only one
game, but over the rest of the season, he won 13, eight of them shutouts,
winding up at 14-17 with a 2.12 ERA as the Giants finished last. That winter Matty married Jane Stoughton
while McGraw rebuilt his team through trades and free-agent acquisitions. The Mathewsons honeymooned in Savannah,
where the Giants held spring training.
Blanche McGraw took the young pitcher’s wife under her wing, while the McGraws
treated Christy like the son they never had.
Christy Mathewson enjoyed a breakout year in 1903, the first
of three consecutive 30-win seasons.
That year he went 30-13 with a 2.26 ERA and a career-high 267
strikeouts, which stood as the NL record until Sandy Koufax struck out
269 in 1961. Matty was just as good in
1904, leading the Giants to the NL pennant with a 33-12 record and 2.03 ERA,
but the following year he was even better.
Mathewson was 31-9 with a minuscule 1.28 ERA, capping off his banner
1905 season with the best World Series any pitcher ever had. Opposing him in the opener on October 9 was
Philadelphia’s Eddie Plank, a fellow Pennsylvanian who’d pitched against
him several times while attending Gettysburg College. Mathewson got the victory, as he had in each
of their college match-ups, shutting out the Athletics on four hits. After Chief Bender shut out the Giants
in Game Two, Matty was ready to pitch again in Game Three but received an extra
day’s rest when the game was rained out.
On October 12 he shut out the Athletics, 9-0, on another four-hitter. The next day Joe McGinnity defeated
Plank, 1-0, and Mathewson returned on just one day’s rest to clinch the Series
with a 2-0 victory over Bender. Within six days, he’d pitched 27 innings, allowing 14 hits, one walk, and no
runs while outstriking 18. The next
week Matty and his catcher Frank Bowerman went hunting in Bowerman’s
hometown of Romeo, Michigan. Coaxed to
pitch for Romeo in its final game of the season against archrival Lake Orion,
Christy lost, 5-0, to an obscure group of semipros.
Mathewson was the toast of New York. Endorsement offers poured in, with Matty
“pitching” Arrow shirt collars, leg garters (for socks), undergarments,
sweaters, athletic equipment, and numerous other products. he received an offer to put his name on a
pool hall/saloon but turned it down when his mother asked, “Do you really want
your name associated with a place like that?”[5] But in a pattern that haunted him for the
rest of his life, disappointment and tragedy followed his greatest
triumph. In 1906 Matty caught a dose of
diphtheria and nearly died, struggling to a 22-12 record and an uncharacteristic
2.97 ERA. Later that season the Giants
called up his brother Henry, who was only 19 years old. In his first start, Henry walked 14 Chicago
Cubs. Disappointing though the ’06
season was, Matty experienced his greatest joy on October 6 when Jane gave
birth to the couple’s first and only child, a son they named Christopher Jr.
Mathewson’s biggest year came in 1908 when he set career
highs in wins (37), games (56), innings (390 2/3), and shutouts (11). His control was never better, averaging less
than one walk per nine innings. Matty’s
season ended in disappointment, however, when he took a no-decision in the
“Merkle Game” and lost to Mordecai Brown, 4-2, in the one-game
playoff. By his own admission, he had
“nothing on the ball” in that contest, and he also felt responsible that four
people had lost their lives in falling accidents at the Polo Grounds that day
(according to Christy’s second cousin, Harold “Alvie” Reynolds, if Mathewson
had only said the word, the Giants would’ve refused to play and those tragedies
would’ve been averted)[6]. Compounding
his guilt, on the afternoon of January 14, 1909, Christy’s youngest brother,
Nicholas, shot himself at their parents’ home in Pennsylvania. Christy, in New York at the time, was
summoned to Pennsylvania and arrived in time to be at his brother’s bedside
when Nicholas, who never regained consciousness, was pronounced dead at 7:10 AM
on January 15. Two years earlier,
Detroit Tigers manager Hughie
Jennings had wanted to sign the 17-year-old Nicholas and bring him directly
to the majors, but Christy had advised against it[7].
Mathewson nonetheless
bounced back to go 25-6 with a career-best 1.14 ERA in 1909. He helped the Giants win three consecutive NL
pennants from 1911 to 1913, leading the NL in ERA in both 1911 (1.99) and 1913
(2.06). in 1914, however, the
34-year-old Mathewson started experiencing constant pain in his left side
towards the end of the season. Doctors
found nothing wrong and told him he was just getting old. It affected his performance, however, his ERA
increased by 3.00 in 1914 even though he still managed to win 24 games, and the
following year he was just 8-14 with a 3.58 ERA. By the midpoint of the 1916 season, Matty had
won just three games. Knowing that his
days as an effective pitcher were behind him. He decided that he wanted to
manage. On July 20 McGraw came through
for his friend, trading him for Cincinnati Reds player-manager Buck Herzog
on the condition that he replace Herzog as manager.
Mathewson was a good manager who might have become a great
one, but he could do little with Herzog’s leftovers and finished tied for last
in 1916. At least he added some interest
to an otherwise dismal season, pitching one last game against his old rival
on “Mordecai Brown Day” in Chicago.
In the only major-league game, he ever pitched in a uniform other than
New York’s, the 36-year-old Matty yielded 15 hits but defeated a nearly
40-year-old Brown, 10-8, giving him the 373rd and final victory of
his 17-year career. In 1917 Mathewson
guided Cincinnati to a 78-76 record, its first winning season since 1909, but
tragedy struck on July 1 when his brother Henry died of tuberculosis at age 30,
leaving behind four daughters. Matty’s
Reds continued their improvement in 1918, but on August 9 he suspended his notorious
first baseman Hal Chase, after confronting him about suspicious-looking misplays and a $50 payment to pitcher Jimmy Ring. Cincinnati went on to finish third but by
that point Mathewson was in France, having been commissioned a captain in the
Army’s Chemical Warfare Division. While
Mathewson was overseas, Chase’s case came before the National Commission;
without the star witness against him, Chase was exonerated.
While in France Mathewson endured a bad bout of influenza and
was exposed to mustard gas during a training exercise. He was hospitalized and apparently had
recovered by the time he returned to the United States in the spring. On his arrival, however, he discovered that Pat
Moran was managing the Reds. When
owner Garry Herrmann didn’t hear from Mathewson that he’d be back in
time for spring training (both had written each other but neither had received
the other’s message), he did what he felt he needed to and hired a new
manager. Mathewson resigned from the
Reds and accepted a position from McGraw as assistant manager of the
Giants. In 1919 New York finished second to the Matty-built Reds, and Mathewson covered the World Series for the New
York Times. Before the first
game, he saw several Chicago White Sox conversing with Chase in the lobby of
Cincinnati’s Hotel Sinton. It had been
rumored that doubting the legitimacy of the Series before a single series
pitch was thrown, Mathewson discussed the possibility of a fix with
sportswriter Hugh Fullerton and agreed to circle suspicious-looking plays on
his scorecard[8]. Angry at what he saw,
believing that “his” team would have won the Series on its own merit, Matty sent
his findings to the National Commission and walked away from the Black Sox
Scandal.
Returning to the Giants in 1920-21, Mathewson was unable to
shake the cough that had plagued him since joining the club in 1919, and the
pain in his left side was back and worse than ever. The physicians who examined him in 1921
immediately diagnosed the condition as tuberculosis. It’s possible that he’s contracted the
disease from his brother Henry and had it since 1914, but the physicians who’d
examined him then were looking for muscle strain, not lesions irritating his
lung and rubbing the inside of his ribs.
Along with his wife Jane, Christy set off for the tuberculosis
sanitarium in Saranac Lake, New York, where he initially received a prognosis
of six weeks to live. For the next two
years, he fought as hard as he ever had on the diamond to recover from the
deadly disease. But in the winter of
1922-23 Matty thought he was strong enough to return to baseball.
That winter McGraw urged Judge Emil Fuchs of New York
to buy the Boston Braves. “And if you
buy them,” McGraw said, “I’ve got the man who can run the club for
you.”[9] On February 11, 1923, Fuchs
announced that he’d bought the Braves and Christy Mathewson would run the club
as president. His physicians warned him
that he couldn’t undertake too much, but Matty nonetheless threw himself into
the task of rebuilding the pitiful Braves.
Some say his cough returned in 1925 after he was soaked in a
spring-training rain shower. Whether it
was stress, the rain, or a disease that wouldn’t give in, Mathewson’s body
began to fail, and he was forced to return to Saranac Lake where he died on
October 7, 1925. On that day McGraw was
in Pittsburgh, covering the World Series for a newspaper syndicate. When he received the news, he immediately
left for New York to meet his wife, Blanche.
Together they went to Saranac Lake to be with Jane Mathewson and Christy
Jr.
Three days later, with his manager, wife, and son standing at the graveside, Christy Mathewson was laid to rest in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, in
view of the Bucknell campus. Today there
is a memorial gate at the entrance to the campus, built in 1927 with donations
from every big-league team, and in 1989 Bison football stadium was renovated
and re-dedicated as Christy Mathewson Memorial Stadium.
Last revised: April 17, 2021 (zp)
An earlier version of this biography appeared in SABR’s “Deadball Stars of the National League” (Brassey’s Inc., 2004), edited by Tom Simon. It also appeared in “From Spring Training to Screen Test: Baseball Players Turned Actors“ (SABR, 2018), edited by Rob Edelman and Bill Nowlin.
Sources
For this biography, the author used a number of contemporary sources, especially those found in the subject’s file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.
Notes
1. Grantland Rice, “Christy Mathewson,” obituary,
New York Herald Tribune, October 9, 1925.
2. A Loomis Field Hero (Christy Mathewson
Stadium Re-Dedication Program), Bucknell
University Athletics, September 30, 1989, 3.
3. Personal letter written to Earl Manchester by
Christy Mathewson, dated July 26, 1900.
Facsimile copy in author’s possession.
4. The Big Six Fire Company in New York won
several contests in New York fire departments
in the early part of the twentieth century and
was regarded as the quickest able to respond to
an emergency. The nickname for Mathewson
(“The Big Six”) is noted in Frank Graham, The
New York Giants: An Informal History of A
Great Baseball Club (New
York: G P Putnam and Sons, 1952), 30.
5. Author interview with Alvie Reynolds, August
1984, Factoryville, Pennsylvania.
6. Ibid.
7. Author interview with Grace Mathewson Van
Lengen (niece of Christy Mathewson, daughter
of Henry Mathewson) Taped Interview, August
15, 1985, Liverpool, New York.
8. Hugh Fullerton, “Is Big League Baseball Being
Run for Gamblers, with Players in the Deal?
”New York Evening World, December 15, 1919.
Fullerton went into more detail about his World
Series conversations with Mathewson in Hugh
Fullerton, “I Recall,” The Sporting News, October
17, 1935. Thanks to Jacob Pomrenke for these
citations.
9. Baseball’s Immortals No. 7 (Cooperstown, New
York: Home Plate Press, 1961), 27.
Full Name: Christopher Mathewson
Born: August 12, 1880, at Factoryville, PA (USA)
Died: October 7, 1925, at Saranac Lake, NY (USA)
